Do's and Don'ts of Tutoring

Observing one tutoring session and watching a few examples of tutoring sessions on YouTube have given me a pretty good idea of some do’s and don’ts. The tutor shouldn’t praise the writer’s work if it’s not genuine. If the truth is being sugarcoated, writers will know. A good idea is for the tutor to become involved in the writing and acknowledging the hard work the writer has put into a piece. On the other hand, a tutoring session shouldn’t be all about correcting errors. Correcting sentence structure and grammatical errors might bring anxiety to the writer to the point where he becomes crippled to continue. A tutoring session is more about the content than correcting lower order concerns. A tutor shouldn’t become involved in the writer’s personal life. There should be boundaries and the session should be about writing and not about the writer venting his/her problems to the tutor. A few other things to keep in mind is to always pay attention to the writer and what they are saying. Show interest in the subject and do NOT pull out your cell phones as tempting as it may be. That tends to show that the session is not being taken seriously and for some writers, the quality of their work depends on this tutoring session.